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Atlanta University is the intellectual home of historian, writer, Pan-Africanist and civil rights
agitator WEB DuBois. It’s where he taught for more than 23 years and wrote his most prominent
book, The Souls of Black Folk.

Atlanta is the city that elected Morehouse man Maynard Jackson

at the age of 35 for three non-consecutive terms. He was the
first Black mayor of any major city in the South. Atlanta is
where I habitually traipsed through the National Black Arts
Festival, one of the most important festivals in the world
that presents work from the African Diaspora, featuring
readings and literary presentations, theatre, dance,
visual art, a film festival, and music of every genre. This

festival was a direct result of Imamu Amiri Baraka’s
Black Arts Movement. With Mr. Jackson as mayor, Black
arts flourished, Black businesses grew, the Black
population exploded, the Black middle class expanded and
so did home ownership. And that’s just the tip of the
iceberg.

So, I was always surrounded by all these overachieving Black people
defying the odds all over the place while living seemingly ordinary lives. The fact that the rest of

the world knew nothing about any of it and didn’t want to know about it hardly seemed to matter.

LL: What kind of music did you grow up listening to in your home?

QE: Music was everywhere.

I sang in the choir in church every day, all the time, non-stop. We had an organ in our living room
and all of us played musical instruments in grade school. My brother Ramon is a bassist but we both
started on the violin. I went to a performing arts high school and performed everything from light
opera and musicals to Puccini. There was music on the radio, music on television, music in the car
as we drove to and fro. Somebody was always singing something, somewhere. My Daddy was
always singing hymns while he was fixing things around the house. There was some sort of

percussive sing-along somewhere. There were a jillion katydids. There was the wind in the trees,
making this overwhelmingly sing-songy shhhh sound, in rhythm.

Sometimes I really miss the South. Especially the Lowcountry.

I can distinctly remember listening to Bernstein’s Mass in its entirety for the first time when I was
in high school, learning it for a production with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and feeling deeply
overwhelmed because it was so beautiful. I thought opera was the greatest, grandest thing in the
world. I loved Leontyne Price and Florence Quivar and Kathleen Battle and Grace Bumbry. I
attempted to sing like them and that solidified my vocal technique and gave me a strong foundation
to sing everything else.

In retrospect my brother Ramon was a wonderful teacher. He would practise constantly -- and as I

sat in my room reading and writing and daydreaming, everything he played and listened to came
through the floorboards. Stanley Clarke. Ron Carter. Jaco Pastorious. Weather Report. Yes. Frank
Zappa. George Duke. Marcus Miller. That Jaco song Teen Town is infused into my psyche because he
put it on repeat until he nailed it. And then when he nailed it, he moved on to something else. It
wasn’t just bassists. There were plenty of drummers that held his attention and eventually mine,
everyone from Terry Bozzio and Vinnie Colaiuta to Billy Cobham and Steve Gadd. It's not surprising